Abby's Flying Fairy School

Indeed Sesame Street is intended for both parents and children. It's skewed more towards trying to get parents more involved in the show with celebrities and parodies as of late, but it was always the intention. Most PBS shows are shockingly well done and have a massive adult fanbase because of their sharp writing. Mostly because these writers know what a pain in the neck that saccharine sweet shows are when they have or have to watch small children. That's why a certain show made for little girls is (almost unfortunately) popular with adult men. Barney, on the other hand is welcome to his younger child base because anyone over the age of 4 can't stand him. Sort of like how my favorite TV Barney (Stintson) described why kids of a certain age who watched Return of the Jedi loved the Ewoks, but everyone over that age hated them. That's why, so far, Sesame Street has enjoyed a larger nostalgic adult fanbase than the dinosuar has.

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Well, I see what you mean, but children in the Barney/Sesame group (The two age groups do mix, around the latter of Barney's end) need that sweetness in their everyday life - Why not bring that over to the television they watch and the characters they'll emulate?

It is quite obviously true that Sesame has the much bigger adult fanbase - Barney has one as well, but, it must be said, it's much smaller.

But you see, I feel like this whole idea of trying to make shows for this age-group appeal to adults as well is rather silly - Yeah, patience will grow short in the adults, but that's just part of caring for children.

As I said, I feel that this stress of appealing to adults takes away from the educational value. You brought up My Little Pony - I became a Brony when the second season was still running, but I was mostly watching Season 1 episodes first. When transitioning to Season 2, I certainly saw a much harder attempt to appeal to Bronies in that season, to the point that it seemed to be the main intention, rather than teaching friendship to the people the show was made for.

I think around the time when television becomes an independant activity (I don't think it should until at least five years old), then trying to appeal to adults seems to be a worthwhile thing to do.

But hey, this is all just my opinion. You're certainly welcome to yours, my friend.

There's no right or wrong answer here. As established on this forum for many years now, I do feel Sesame is the definitive show for pre-school-aged children out there. If I had kids, it would likely be the first show I would expose them to. But that doesn't mean Barney doesn't have anything to offer for it's target audience whatsoever, it's just that that show has different values than Sesame does. I mean when you really think about it Barney was really the show that ushered in the era on PBS kids shows that defined them in the 90s. As that show's popularity waned by the end of the 90s, I can easily see that there is a balance between sweetness and I guess we'll say "edginess".

And one more thing in defense of the adult Barney fan community, which I should mention I'm not a part of but know a decent number of people who are so I know enough about them to say something, the fanbase is fairly respectable, much more than you'd think they'd be. There is a Barney Wiki that is reasonably well-kept, checked frequently for errors by those who run it and would make a fairly decent resource if anyone actually needed knowledge on the dino (just don't look up Custom Barney Wiki... like, really, you don't). And to be fair: while, yeah, the staff at Sesame has always tried to please the adult fanbase and parents, they really didn't start trying to reach out to them until around the 35th anniversary, maybe even after that. I don't think we would have seen anything like the Old School sets or Cookie Monster viral videos 10 years ago.

There's no right or wrong answer here. As established on this forum for many years now, I do feel Sesame is the definitive show for pre-school-aged children out there. If I had kids, it would likely be the first show I would expose them to. But that doesn't mean Barney doesn't have anything to offer for it's target audience whatsoever, it's just that that show has different values than Sesame does. I mean when you really think about it Barney was really the show that ushered in the era on PBS kids shows that defined them in the 90s. As that show's popularity waned by the end of the 90s, I can easily see that there is a balance between sweetness and I guess we'll say "edginess".

And one more thing in defense of the adult Barney fan community, which I should mention I'm not a part of but know a decent number of people who are so I know enough about them to say something, the fanbase is fairly respectable, much more than you'd think they'd be. There is a Barney Wiki that is reasonably well-kept, checked frequently for errors by those who run it and would make a fairly decent resource if anyone actually needed knowledge on the dino (just don't look up Custom Barney Wiki... like, really, you don't). And to be fair: while, yeah, the staff at Sesame has always tried to please the adult fanbase and parents, they really didn't start trying to reach out to them until around the 35th anniversary, maybe even after that. I don't think we would have seen anything like the Old School sets or Cookie Monster viral videos 10 years ago.

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Just what I've been trying to say, John.

As I said in my first post here, there is no children's show that works for every child, so the fact that we have both Barney & Friends and Sesame Street - Along with all of the other great stuff out there for young kids - is a fantastic thing.

Sorry to gripe so much on this one issue of it - Sesame Street has done an amazing amount of things for children with all of the things they've done in these past 43 years.

i have to agree with some of you , in the future ss will be cgi , we have some old school people keeping jim's legacy alive but there will be a time when its all new up and comers and the switch will be made, do i want it to happen NO sorry but i would stop watching, but we are the 1% and kids the 99% love flash and whats new

I know I'm jumping into this kinda late, but I've got some insight coming from actually having worked on Abby's Flying Fairy School.

Trust me, they're nowhere close to replacing the Muppets with CGI. CGI is expensive and slow to produce - It took a team of 30+ people 18 months to produce the first 13 episodes of AFFS. They could never afford to do the entire show that way, not even when the tech gets faster, even if they decided to do the show overseas in Singapore or something.

Won't happen. The reasons they did AFFS in CG were purely creative. You couldn't do shots of Blogg on a Niblet Motorcycle, or Gene coming out of his lamp, or an itty-bitty Sparklenose sitting on the shoulder of her students, or the kids swimming with a whale-sized whale, or the Donkey Dance of Joy, or any one of a hundred other moments in the show with real Muppets. Not nearly as well, anyway. SS went with CG as a way to add stories to the Muppet world that they wouldn't otherwise be able to do.

And while it was a ton of fun to make the show, from what I hear there will be no more AFFS beyond what we already made. Word on the street is that too many parents complained, many of them complaining about not wanting their kids watching "fairies" all the time — they're afraid it might make 'em.... "funny." I have no idea how true that claim is, but that's what I've heard through the grapevine. And I can confirm that the team who was making Abby wrapped up over a year ago and hasn't worked on it since.

That's too bad if they don't make any more segments. The fact that the segment would make their kids funny is such a slap in the face. They have enough segments for there to be no repeats for a season, but if there's no more, would they replace it with a new segment? And if so, with what?

And while it was a ton of fun to make the show, from what I hear there will be no more AFFS beyond what we already made. Word on the street is that too many parents complained, many of them complaining about not wanting their kids watching "fairies" all the time — they're afraid it might make 'em.... "funny." I have no idea how true that claim is, but that's what I've heard through the grapevine. And I can confirm that the team who was making Abby wrapped up over a year ago and hasn't worked on it since.

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I'm going to pretend that was some weird rumor, but...

Yeah, Sesame Street used to stand tough against crazies. Racists that freaked out about Gordon and Susan living on the same street as Bob. Nutjobs with a 10 word vocabulary complaining about How Count VonCount will turn kids into Satanists.... they shrugged these guys off and carried on. Now it's like "We can't use the Katy Perry segment because there were complaints on Youtube" (the comments section of Youtube... where maturity, tact, and sanity go to die). And now "We can't have fairies on a show because gender roles are forced upon unhappy people for a reason." Yeah....

Still, it sounds more like a problem about boy viewers getting bored by the segment (even though it's quite gender neutral... almost more boy friendly). Though, knowing Sesame Workshop, they feel they have enough segments to rerun for 5 more seasons because they're running on a low budget. I hate the fact that's the case, but I'd rather that than "Fairies might make my boy not a Tim Allen archtype of a man."

I truthfully like AFFS and I do admit that I used to watch Barney before I went to school (was in 5th grade at the time) but now I think Barney is one of THE dumbest shows to ever exist, and this goes for those BEEPING Teletubbies. Quite a waste of money, but if someone who has a severe disability and can't help themselves literally and actually believes Barney is their friend (along with another one like that "Boobah" show), then so be it. I just think it's strange that I've hung out with people who are disabled like I am (and have nearly the same disability I do) and I bet that at least half of these "so-called friends" (I've considered people like me, with the exception of my 2 brothers, to be as such, due to the fact that my grandparents "assumed" that I knew everyone like me, and I had spent nearly 20 years out of my own life just to be around a bunch of people I didn't know well enough to even like, and the reason why I quit being around these people as of the end of August of last year is because I must have too huge of an ego to be around them) probably watched Barney at one point or another, and thought that they could relate themselves to him.

Not that way, though. Something completely separate from the show. This is going to have a street story and maybe a segment. I was talking something more like "Play with me Sesame" only made up of 2 segments, no street story, with some clip in between.

Anyway, seems Abby's School is done. The press release for season 45 makes no mention of it. They are completely done with production, and last season was made entirely of reused Abby segments. That's usually a sign they're not going to bother next season.

It wasn't mentioned in last season's press release either, but it was still on the show. Unless they explicitly say they're adding something new, I think it'll still be there. They've kinda dug themselves into an EW-type hole. Not because AFFS is popular, but those things must been expensive to make and they're certainly gettin' their monies worth on 'em.

I would say replace it with E&B Adventures, but that's also just 26 (widescreen) episodes and I doubt they would use a second E&B bit in the show. Whether you'd like to admit it or not, E&B aren't top tier characters on the show anymore, mainly because they're not on enough.

I've been watching Sesame Street a lot lately, and I don't like Abby's Flying Fairy School much at all. I know they're trying to help kids with critical thinking skills, and it's not as bad as some other children's programming, but I feel like it doesn't have any respect for kids at all. And that's why I liked Sesame Street to begin with; it respected kids and didn't talk down to them. Sadly, Abby's Flying Fairy School does.

It wasn't mentioned in last season's press release either, but it was still on the show. Unless they explicitly say they're adding something new, I think it'll still be there. They've kinda dug themselves into an EW-type hole. Not because AFFS is popular, but those things must been expensive to make and they're certainly gettin' their monies worth on 'em.

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Considering they rerun reruns multiple times in new episode seasons that run together with reruns that used the reruns before, I'd say they're in danger of turning the audience off with 10 minutes of reused footage in the middle of the show. I know they say kids love repeats and repetition, but 9 minutes of the show devoted to a segment that ran certain episodes 3 times in the new episodes of a season seems to be pushing it.

While I hope the rumors of parents calling to get them to drop the segment about it being girly (that someone posted a while back) aren't true, I really hope them dropping it completely is. They do want to get their money's worth, I agree, but those things have paid for themselves a season ago at least. It should never have been a daily recurring segment.

I wish the formatting would go back to Sesame before EW, I don't mean classic stuff, but give us more segments, things that'll catch your attention. To be honest, I'm not even a fan of the Murray segment with his lamb, I don't think many people are, I don't even know if it's still on the show. I haven't watched modern Sesame in a long time. I'd like more E&B. AFFS and Murray/Lamb can go. To me, both of those feel like pacebreakers. Wasn't the goal to have commercials advertising letters and numbers? I'm sure they could go back to that and make it so it'd still catch the attention of todays kids. Cut down on the celebrities too. I may be dwelling in the past, but in my opinion I think it'd be better this way. I'm not saying we need classic skits, i'm saying the pre EW formula would be great, with the exception of Elmo the Musical, of course.

I wish the formatting would go back to Sesame before EW, I don't mean classic stuff, but give us more segments, things that'll catch your attention. To be honest, I'm not even a fan of the Murray segment with his lamb, I don't think many people are, I don't even know if it's still on the show. I haven't watched modern Sesame in a long time. I'd like more E&B. AFFS and Murray/Lamb can go. To me, both of those feel like pacebreakers. Wasn't the goal to have commercials advertising letters and numbers? I'm sure they could go back to that and make it so it'd still catch the attention of todays kids. Cut down on the celebrities too. I may be dwelling in the past, but in my opinion I think it'd be better this way. I'm not saying we need classic skits, i'm saying the pre EW formula would be great, with the exception of Elmo the Musical, of course.

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Times have changed. Back then, there wasn't much for kids and commercials were apparently big with them. That's probably not the case these days.

Murray and his lamb are still on the show, and those bits are very good in terms of puppetry. Not only do they have the Muppets out in the real world, but they have Murray doing things like digging dirt, washing his hands, running bases, etc. Things they couldn't ordinarily do.

Times have changed. Back then, there wasn't much for kids and commercials were apparently big with them. That's probably not the case these days.

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Exactly. We're talking about an era where the only commercials most people see are before internet games and videos. And a good pop up blocker will clear that up. Sesame Street takes its cue from other pop cultural things (as it always has done), and somehow it took Nick Jr. and Playhouse Disney style "programming blocks" and made the show similar to that. Even though those have been around for quite some time before, and I take it as an excuse to turn the American show into essentially what the international broadcasts are like.

Not that they wouldn't love to make the show similar to the original format, the producers feel the show wouldn't attract a child audience they're going for. They tried it, and it didn't appeal to them. I don't even see why they were let past the testing stage if they didn't do well, but I'm grateful they tried anyway.